October = National Cyber Security Awareness Month

What are you doing to be more #CyberAware and to help promote online safety? You could start by reading Who R U Really?, a novel about a teenager who falls for a guy online. "Based on actual events, the story should be required reading for all teens." --VOYA Magazine 

Here are more tips for being more aware online:

8 Happy Pictures & Quotes for #UNLOCKED

As we near the official release date for UNLOCKED, I thought I'd share some fun pictures, quotes, and stories from readers and retailers. YAY for books! And please, as you receive, read, and review your copy of UNLOCKED, share updates on social media and tag me. It thrills me to no end to see the book out in the world!

Happy Book Birthday to LIVE FAST, DIE YOUNG by Vanessa Barneveld

Release day for Vanessa Barneveld's YA novella, LIVE FAST, DIE YOUNG, is here! This quick read is full of heartbreak and hope. Vanessa will donate half of the profits from the sale of her novella to a charity that supports young people dealing with cancer. So make sure you pick up LIVE FAST, DIE YOUNG. It's only 99 cents at these e-tailers:

Amazon | iBooks | B&N | Kobo

Add LIVE FAST, DIE YOUNG to your Goodreads shelf

Read on for the summary and excerpt...

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Summary

He has six months to live. She has six months to save him...

Molly Corbett can’t stand seeing her childhood pal Alex Gibson destroy himself. He’s gone from straight-A student to rebel without a cause. With so much at stake, some serious interference is called for—or at least Micromanaging Molly thinks so. Alex needs to get back on the path to the Ivy League. But the harder Molly pushes Alex, the harder he pushes back.

Alex has a secret.

Well, two secrets. Number one: He has terminal melanoma. With six months to live, Alex hasn’t got a second to waste. And hanging around hospitals when his friends think he’s cutting school definitely counts as wasted time. Instead, he’s going to drop out, surf, drive fast cars…and finally put secret number two out there. He’s in love with Molly and he’s going to tell her before it’s too late.

Edgy, and yet wonderfully tender, LIVE FAST, DIE YOUNG sent me to reader heaven!

~ Tina Ferraro, author of THE ABCs OF KISSING BOYS

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LIVE FAST, DIE YOUNG Excerpt

Around six the next morning, I find Mom sitting at the island bench in the kitchen. She looks pretty chill for someone who just laid on a breakfast of fruit salad, yogurt, sautèed mushrooms and kale, unbuttered whole-wheat sourdough and two eggs, sunny-side up. A thick, football-field-green smoothie sits in a tall glass by the blender. Great. More kale.

“Hey, Alex!” She smiles over her coffee mug and pats the stool next to her. “Sleep well?”

I shuffle onto the seat and stare at the food. “Have I died and gone to buffet heaven?”

My mother winces at my choice of words, then makes a big effort to put on a happy face like she always does. “I want you to keep your strength up. You don’t have to eat all of it. Just most of it.”

“And you don’t have to go out of your way to make this for me. I mean, thanks. A lot. But I don’t have much of an appetite.”

“Oh, I’m having some, too,” she says in an overly bright voice. With her fork, she scoops up a tiny portion of kale, hardly enough to fill a mouse’s belly.

Since my diagnosis a few months ago, Mom hasn’t been eating much either. This doesn’t stop her from testing all the “cancer-fighting” recipes she finds on Pinterest. Baking is therapy, she says. I call it a waste of food. Fortunately, the family next door is more than happy to take excess lentil loaf off our hands.

Every hour of every day, I wonder what will happen to Mom after I go. She’ll be all alone. Dad moved back to Australia after the divorce. He’s making custom surfboards, connecting with old friends, so I know he’ll be okay. Mom’s literally got no one. Except the perpetually hungry neighbors and her five employees. Yet another reason why I shouldn’t die so young.

It’s crazy. Why does it have to be like this? Maybe the doctors got it wrong. They’re not infallible. They’re not gods. They can’t predict the exact number of months, days, hours, and seconds a person has left on Earth.

Then again, I’ve peeked at my medical records. I know it doesn’t look good for me. With the help of a counselor I’ve gotten to the stage of mostly accepting that I’m headed for a dead end. I’ve even started giving some of my stuff away. The iPad Dad gave me is now Molly’s. Mom won’t have to go through boxes of my middle-school clothes after I’m gone because I’ve already dropped them off at Goodwill. The cobalt-blue board I learned to surf on? I’m giving that to a kid down the street whether he likes it or not.

Noticing I haven’t touched a single morsel, Mom says, “Will you at least have the kale, broccoli and goji berry smoothie? You don’t even have to chew. Close your eyes and drink it.”

Speaking of acceptance... Yeah, Mom’s adamant that five doctors on two continents are wrong and that I’ll make a miraculous recovery. All we need is faith and love and kale.

I would rather eat broken glass mixed with cyanide, but for Mom, I guess I can manage this. Forcing a smile, I sip chunks of raw broccoli that slipped by the blender’s blades. I’ll check over the blender later, make sure it’s working okay.

“After breakfast, I’m taking you to that appointment you missed yesterday,” she says quickly.

Feeling guilty, I look away. She didn’t hammer me for skipping out on seeing this “amazing herbalist-slash-psychic-healer.” Still, I know she was disappointed in me. “What about work? You’ve missed a lot of days because of me.”

“It’s fine. Things are slow anyway.” Her voice is two octaves higher than usual.

She’s lying. The real estate biz in this corner of SoCal is booming. Foreclosures have brought in the flippers—the people who swoop in on bank-owned properties and fix them up for a profit.

“But you need those commissions.” Silently I add, To pay my medical bills.

Another reason to feel guilty. I’m aware of how much my cancer is costing my parents. Flights to a melanoma specialist in Sydney and more hospital follow-ups here don’t come cheap. My folks tell me not to worry about that, but ironically I’m old enough to figure out that dying young is expensive.

And now Molly’s pushing me to apply to Yale.

I can’t blame her. She knows it’s been my dream since forever to go to Yale, get a medical degree, become a pediatrician. But it’d be a waste of time and money for me to even try to follow that dream.

I grimace at the olive oil oozing from the barely touched kale and mushroom thing.

Waste. Sure is the theme of the day. Of my life, even.

---

About Vanessa

Vanessa lives in Australia with her musician husband, a photogenic cat, and a ghost. In addition to writing, she works as a TV closed captioner for the deaf and audio describer for the blind. Her pastimes include baking, iPhonography, and traveling the world on a quest to find the world’s greatest fries.

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | GoodReads

For giveaway and book release news, sign up to Vanessa's mailing list.

Announcing the Fall 2016 #YASH Teams

It's been a long hot summer, but guess what's just around the corner? 

YES!

The YA Scavenger Hunt starts on October 4, 2016. It's your chance to win TONS of fabulous books from some of your favorite authors! Yup. That's right.

All of the details will be posted here on October 4th at Noon (Pacific Time). Until then ... here are pictures of the Fall 2016 teams:

More Inspirational Writing Quotes

Looking for a boost or a kick in the right direction? Here are three tips from the writing experts:

Now get off the Internet and get back to your writing project!

Book Feature: COURAGE IN PATIENCE by Beth Fehlbaum

Gritty, heart-pounding, and hopeful: Courage in Patience, Book 1 in The Patience Trilogy, is free this week only on Amazon!

Click here to get your free ebook of COURAGE IN PATIENCE from Amazon.

Courage in Patience is the fictional story of a teen girl’s recovery from childhood sexual abuse. Beth Fehlbaum wrote it as after her therapist suggested that she try writing a novel. It was only when Beth pulled herself out of her own head and tried to imagine the process of recovery through someone else’s eyes that she came “unstuck.”

Courage in Patience:
Courage to endure. 
Courage to survive.
Courage to overcome.

Tenacious 14-year-old Ashley Asher claws her way back to normalcy after enduring six years of an unimaginable Hell. Uprooted from her negligent and selfish mother, Ashley finds solace in the safety of her father's home. Building a relationship with her stepmother, she's finally able to open up and confront the past that haunts her.

With the help of her stepmom, therapist, and a group of troubled adolescents, Ashley battles her demons, struggling to find the normal teenage life she's always wanted. Can Ashley find the strength and courage to overcome the horrors of her past while fighting for the future she so deserves?

. . .

Read this interview excerpt for Beth's insights into the creation of COURAGE IN PATIENCE and the process of recovery from Childhood Sexual Abuse:

Question: You went through six years of intensive therapy to help you recover from being abused as a child. A lot of people, young adults and adults alike, find starting therapy a very frightening and uncomfortable experience. What advice would you give someone who is thinking about starting therapy for the first time?

Answer: The six years of therapy I went through were with a clinical psychologist whom I clicked with at the same time that circumstances in my life came together in a way that I had a strong support system in my husband and then-teenage daughters.

I had been in and out of therapy many times since my early twenties, but I never had the support system in place to withstand what I had to do in order to get well: face the truth about my stepfather sexually abusing me and my mother not protecting me. This involved breaking with my family of origin completely—basically, when I insisted on no more playing “Let’s Pretend,” it was made clear to me in a variety of ways that I had done something so wrong (in their eyes) that they wanted nothing to do with me anymore. It was very, very difficult because my mother was an amazing grandmother to my kids, and they lost her in the process.

Recovery from childhood sexual abuse is very, very difficult. My therapist compared it to a barefoot walk from Texas to Alaska and back, with all the weather along the way. I would agree with that assessment; in fact, I used that comparison in my Patience books, Courage in Patience and Hope in Patience. I strongly believe that people who have been sexually abused and are seeking to heal from it and reclaim their lives need the guidance of an experienced mental health professional. If the first therapist (or second, or third) does not seem to be helping, keep going until you find one you click with. Don’t give up, because you are worth the fight to reclaim your life.

Outside of the therapist’s office, you need a strong support system of people who are aware of what you are going through, who will be safe for you to be vulnerable, and will give you emotional shelter when you need it.

And—be prepared to be completely honest with yourself and others in your life. It’s the only way to heal and find out how strong you are.

In addition to writing Young Adult Contemporary Fiction, Beth Fehlbaum is a high school English-Language Arts teacher who frequently draws on her experience as an educator to write her books. She has a B.A. in English, Minor in Secondary Education, and an M.Ed. in Reading.

Beth is a featured author on the 2015-2016 Spirit of Texas Reading List- High School for the Kirkus Starred Reviewed Big Fat Disaster (Merit Press/F+W Media, March 2014) and The Patience Trilogy: Courage (1), Hope (2), and Truth (3) (Steady On Books, April 2016).

Beth is a member of the RAINN (Rape , Abuse, Incest National Network) Speakers’ Bureau. She has a following in the young adult literature world and also among survivors of sexual abuse because of her work with victims’ advocacy groups.

She has been the keynote speaker at the National Crime Victims’ Week Commemoration Ceremony at the Hall of State in Dallas, Texas and a presenter for Greater Texas Community Partners, where she addressed a group of social workers and foster children on the subject of “Hope.”

Beth is in-demand as a panelist, having presented/appeared at the Texas Library Association Annual Conference, the American Library Association’s annual conference, YALSA, and N.C.T.E./ALAN, and she is also the founder/administrator of UncommonYA, a thirty-member-strong marketing group and website for authors of edgy YA fiction. Beth is a member of The Author’s Guild.

She is a survivor of a traumatic childhood, like Ashley in The Patience Trilogy, and the day-to-day manager of an eating disorder much like Colby’s in Big Fat Disaster. These life experiences give her a unique perspective, and she writes her characters’ stories in a way meant to inspire hope.

Beth lives with her family in the woods of East Texas.

Cover Reveal for Pintip Dunn's New Novella: BEFORE TOMORROW

Here it is!

All of Pintip's covers are fantastic, and this one does NOT disappoint.

Huge congrats to Pintip for another wonderful story.




Title: Before Tomorrow
Publisher: Entangled TEEN
Release Date: Oct. 31, 2016

In a world where all seventeen-year-olds receive a memory from their future selves, Logan Russell's vision is exactly as he expects—and exactly not. He sees himself achieving his greatest wish of becoming a gold-star swimmer, but strangely enough, the vision also shows him locking eyes with a girl from his past, Callie Stone, and experiencing an overwhelming sense of love and belonging.

Logan’s not sure what the memory means, but soon enough, he learns that his old friend Callie is in trouble. She’s received an atypical memory, one where she commits a crime in the future. According to the law, she must be imprisoned, even though she's done nothing wrong. Now, Logan must decide if he'll give up his future as a gold-star swimmer and rescue the literal girl of his dreams. All he'll have to do is defy Fate.

Add BEFORE TOMORROW on Goodreads!

But what if you don't want to wait until Oct. 31?

No problem. Pre-order REMEMBER YESTERDAY, book 2 in the FORGET TOMORROW series, and register your receipt here, and you'll receive a copy of BEFORE TOMORROW to read before anyone else! Plus, U.S. residents will also get a bookplate and bookmark!

Want to learn more about FORGET TOMORROW and REMEMBER YESTERDAY? Click here.

REMEMBER YESTERDAY buy links:

Amazon Barnes & Noble iBooks Kobo

Pintip Dunn is a New York Times bestselling author of YA fiction. She graduated from Harvard University, magna cum laude, with an A.B. in English Literature and Language. She received her J.D. at Yale Law School, where she was an editor of the YALE LAW JOURNAL.

Pintip is represented by literary agent Beth Miller of Writers House. Her debut novel, FORGET TOMORROW, won the RWA RITA® for Best First Book. Her other novels include THE DARKEST LIE and the forthcoming REMEMBER YESTERDAY. She lives with her husband and children in Maryland. You can learn more about Pintip and her books at www.pintipdunn.com.

Early Reviews for UNLOCKED

Less than three weeks until UNLOCKED releases into the world, and early reviews are starting to come in for the book!

Have you pre-ordered your copy yet? If not, Target has the hardback listed for only $12.32. That's a sweet deal! And be sure to turn in your receipt to win pre-order prizes!

School Library Journal said about UNLOCKED: 
“Kelly's premise of mixing hypnotism and the occult is promising. … The psychological elements and mystery bring the real tension. The book's final third barrels to a dramatic finale. … VERDICT An additional purchase for libraries where psychological thrillers and mysteries are popular.”

The Bookwhore Diaries Blog:
"This book shows the complexity of human behavior. It showed how one struggles with loss, with the unexplainable and with hope. Put into mind as well that these things are experienced by a teenager, whose emotional intelligence is still developing, chaos would definitely describe what she is feeling. Unlocked shows how one accepts whoever they are and letting the people who truly understand them enter their lives."

Pre-order your copy today, and then be sure to post your review online.

Happy reading. :)

#IWSG: Time to Write

The first Wednesday of the month is Insecure Writer's Support Group!

http://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/

"The Insecure Writer’s Support Group is a home for writers in all stages; from unpublished to bestsellers. Our goal is to offer assistance and guidance. We want to help writers overcome their insecurities, and by offering encouragement we are creating a community of support."

Join the group:  http://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/p/iwsg-sign-up.html 


SEPTEMBER 7TH QUESTION FOR BLOGGERS: How do you find the time to write in your busy day?

For me ... the question behind the question is: How important is my writing to me today? 

If I left my writing until I "found time" - I wouldn't write. There are so many obligations and have-to-do items each day that finding extra time in a day is a nearly impossible task for me. Therefore, in order for me to accomplish my writing goals each day, I must TAKE the time. I must make writing a priority. Are my goals important enough for me to get up at 5am and write? Important enough to get up at 4:30am and write?

Many successful writers have full-time jobs in addition to their writing careers. Often times, they get up crazy early to write. And they publish books on a regular schedule. So, if you're like me and have no full-time job, but find yourself extremely busy with all of the other demands of life, we must TAKE the time to write and make it a priority. Get up early. Write first.

What about you? How do you make writing a priority in your day?

Inspirational Writing Quotes

From @savethecat - "The plot doesn't just move ahead, it spins and intensifies as it goes." 

What's your favorite writing quote?

Book Review: BEDLAM'S DOOR by Mark Rubinstein

Bedlam's Door: True Tales of Madness and Hope by Mark Rubinstein

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


A terrific book for people studying psychology and for everyone interested in mental illness and the medical world.

Mark Rubinstein, MD, is a novelist, physician, and psychiatrist. His ability to tell a story with vivid details is what makes this book great. This book reads very much like a compilation of short stories, but the difference is that each of these stories actually happened.

As the description on the back of the book reads: "Bedlam's Door depicts the challenges mental illness poses for patients, their families, health-care professionals, and our society."

Some lines from the book that really struck me include:

"If I could tear open my chest, and if you could lick my heart, it would poison you." (page 15)

"Four times as many women as men attempt suicide, yet four times as many men succeed in killing themselves." (page 25)

"I'd grown accustomed to the medley of moans, groans, shrieks, and rantings of a nighttime psychiatric ward." (page 34)

I highly recommend this book for its excellent writing and the glimpse it gives readers into the world of mental illness.



View all my reviews